This week (or, more honestly, two weeks ago) we’re writing about mornings for 52 Blogs. Read on to find out why I love and hate mornings.

Mornings are a mixed affair for me. Like any sane person I loathe and despise them with a venom traditionally reserved for those who stole your teddy bears at a young age. That said, morning can be one of the most glorious times of day.

What *is* good about mornings? Well, they can be both peaceful and vibrant: it’s the time when most [rational] people are still in bed (and, frankly, any time when people are largely removed from the equation is a good time in my book) yet it’s also the time when everything’s coming back to life. I may be more of a night owl than a morning person but being up when the sun rises and the birds start singing can be one of those times that reminds you that you’re alive, and maybe even why.

Suffice to say in the right circumstances I love being awake at dawn. I even love being out and about at dawn, providing it’s by choice.

A slight contrast to this: I remember being out late one night during my teenage years, late enough to miss the bus home. It wasn’t a long walk home, but there were still several miles and a couple of hours standing between me and my bed. So I walked. And walked. Eventually I got to the point where I was just a few minutes away from home. It was that moment that the sky just started to go from black to blue and the birds started singing. I remember finding it enormously bleak – a cold reminder that I was on the wrong side of the night; that I was supposed to getting ready to wake up, not looking forward to going to sleep.

These days mornings have a similar bittersweet tang to them. Anyone who goes to (daytime) work will know that the mornings no longer belong to you; equally any parent will also know that the weekend mornings no longer belong to you either. My weekday morning schedule is a bit like this:

  • Get up (well, duh!)
  • Sort out Stormy’s breakfast (15 month old child, for those of you who don’t know)
  • Make tea
  • And, no, I don’t mean that Stormy gets fed a 15 month old child for breakfast…
  • Make Carter’s sandwich (for lunch)
  • Prepare porridge for me and Carter
  • Sort out some fruit for Carter’s recess
  • Wait for Carter to emerge
  • Prepare Stormy’s daycare bag
  • Change Stormy’s nappy and dress him (if I’m behind schedule someone else may end up doing that)
  • Make and subsequently eat porridge
  • Pack Carter’s schoolbag
  • Get dressed
  • Harass Carter until he’s finally ready to leave
  • Leave house (typically dropping one or both of the kids at school/daycare)

Weekends are slightly more tranquil, but will typically involve getting up before 7am (which is when Stormy gets up these days). At least with the weekends I can soothe the blow by eating biscuits and playing 80s music on Spotify, but there’s no lying in and there’s no vegging out on the sofa watching crap.

That said, if it wasn’t for the nagging feel that I could do with another five or six hours’ sleep, the weekend mornings would be pretty nice. Stormy doesn’t need much more than to be fed a banana and be given free access to his toys. The house is peaceful, I can drink as much tea as I can stomach, and I have free reign on Spotify.

But there’s still no cure for those bastard weekday mornings 😉